There's Something Fishy About Agnes on 'WandaVision'
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The following story contains major spoilers for Disney+'s WandaVision.
Kathryn Hahn is one of the very best parts of WandaVision as Agnes, the neighbor to Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany). But there was more to her than just that.
There were plenty of clues that Agnes could actually be Agatha Harkness, a witch and occasional Marvel Comics villain....and that turned out to be the truth.
Here's everything we know and everything we've learned about Agnes/Agatha Harkness.
WandaVision isn't your typical Marvel Cinematic Universe endeavor. The universe has typically stayed, for the most part, in the acti0n realm: movies like Iron Man or Avengers: Infinity War are the meat and potatoes of the massive franchise. But movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier start to veer toward a spy thriller. The upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is said to have heavy horror influences. And WandaVision, really, has been the first big psychological mystery of the MCU. And what's a mystery without a twist villain?
Throughout the entirety of WandaVision, there's been one consistent piece outside of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), and that's been their nosy neighbor Agnes, played wonderfully by Kathryn Hahn and always showing up, for better or for worse, at just the nick of time. Such a nick of time, in fact, that it seemed almost fishy. And by Episode 7, titled "Breaking The Fourth Wall," we finally got official confirmation why: "Agnes" is really Agatha Harkness, another witch who's been orchestrating all of the Westview trouble all along. (Agatha is a longtime Marvel Comics character, first appearing in 1970)
The big reveal is a stunner: after Monica makes her way back into The Hex, a brief confrontation seems to finally be getting her somewhere with Wanda. Until we see Agnes looking out her window and eager to get Wanda out of there. She brings Wanda into her house, and directs Wanda down into the basement to look for Tommy and Billy. She looks around down there for a bit, but finds nothing other than a scary-looking enchanted book, and a bunny in a cage. Wanda turns around and Agnes is there looking quite sinister. She confirms: Wanda's not the only one there with magical powers, and sends some sort of spell on her.
A montage then plays, showing us all the ways that Agnes has been manipulating reality up to this point, through all the sitcom eras we've seen so far. It was Agatha All Along, as yet another wildly catchy theme song confirms. It was Agatha causing trouble in the first episode. It was Agatha getting in Herb's head when he was sawing through brick. It was Agatha entirely manipulating our other-universe Pietro. Hell, Agatha was totally hamming it up when she was pretending to be in a trance talking to Vision. It was even her behind the camera for the episode's Modern Family fourth-wall break. She's been 100% in control all along.
Maybe the biggest question now is what does Agnes want? She put Wanda under some sort of hex. She also has a pet bunny, which...could be someone? Could Doctor Strange have taken her on at some point prior to Westview and gotten transformed into a pet Bunny? Oh Jeez. Snap out of it, Wanda!
The reveal was, to put it simply, great. WandaVision didn't have a clear villain at the start—Wanda seemed to have people in a trance, but that's our hero. We knew that. We weren't going to go switcheroo there. And in the outside world, yes, SWORD Director Tyler Hayward is a pest. But that's not a main villain. Agatha is here, and Agatha is ready to cause some ruckus the rest of the way.
Agatha Harkness is hundreds of years old.
Following the big reveal, Agatha was revealed to not only be a witch responsible for everything we've seen go wrong so far in Westview, but to be at least hundreds of years old. The opening sequence of episode 8 titled "Previously On" brings viewers back to 1693, where Agatha is shown to be one of the Salem Witches. In a fun twist, when a group asks her if she's a witch, she responds in the affirmative—because as we find out, that's not the problem. The problem is that Agatha has begun to use and embrace a dark, prohibited magic. And the rest of her coven is attempting to put an end to this.
Except we see that Agatha can pretty easily overpower the rest of her cover with her dark magic (the purple magic we saw used in Episodes 7 and 8). She destroys the coven with her purple magic beams, before saving their leader—who she calls "Mother"—for last, taking that familiar amulet from around her neck and flying off.
And Agatha now wants Wanda's secrets.
Throughout Episode 8, Agatha walks Wanda through various stages of her past. She wants—needs—to find out how Wanda was able to reach the level of magic that she's currently reached, where she's able to control the entire town of Westview from miles away. We're talking thousands of people. And in her quest for these answers, she sees all the loss and trauma that Wanda has been through, including Vision's death, and what we now learn is Wanda's entire recreation of him.
At the end of the episode, Agatha has Wanda's twins held hostage, as she reveals her working theory of Wanda's magic (Chaos Magic) and finally coins her nickname: The Scarlet Witch.
And in the end, Agatha got exactly what she wanted.
Agatha Harkness put up a valiant fight—she messed with Wanda's head all season long, and tormented her constantly, scheming to get her power. But once Wanda realized and embraced her destiny as the Scarlet Witch, there was only so much Agatha could do. Wanda used Runes throughout the entire hex, making Agatha's magic no good.
Agatha told Wanda that she couldn't put her in prison, or kill her—she might need her in the future to teach her about how to use her magic. That's, of course, a nod to Agatha's role as Wanda's mentor in the Marvel Comics. But for now, Wanda hits Agatha with a sentence of her own choosing: the nosy neighbor. When everyone else from Westview is freed from their Westview trance (and in no particular rush to apologize to or embrace Wanda), Wanda places Agatha alone back into Agnes mode. If and when she needs to hit her up for some magic advice, she'll know exactly where to find her. But for the time being, Agatha has lost the privilege of making any more trouble.
The clues were there all along.
The first two episodes of the show introduce a sitcom world clearly evolving on an episode-by-episode basis. The first episode, set in the '50s, is styled after The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the second, in the '60s, is Bewitched. The end of Episode 2 made it clear that Episode 3, set in the '70s, will be in glorious technicolor.
However, despite WandaVision's stalwart commitment to the sitcom bit, it's clear something bigger and more mysterious is brewing. One blatant hint that a mystery is afoot? The fact that neither Wanda nor Vision have any clear memory of what happened before the events of the series began. There's also the end of Episode 1, where we see someone—in full color—watching their show on a little TV monitor (this turns out to be Thor character Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings)). And in Episode 2, of course, there's the repeated moments of someone's question for Wanda—Who's doing this to you, Wanda? (Which turns out to be returning Ant-Man and the Wasp character, Jimmy Woo).
Which brings us to Agnes. She shows up at just the right times throughout the first two episodes—Kevin Feige referred to her as the "nosy neighbor" when promoting the show. Yet the timing always seemed conspicuous; she showed up at just the right time to push things in one direction or another.
Her name—Agnes—is a contraction of the name of the classic Marvel Comics villain we now know is her. In the comics, Harkness was an old woman, but one of the most powerful witches in the world. She was primarily an antagonist of the Fantastic Four (who may themselves get involved here at some point), but did eventually come into contact with—and was a mentor to—Scarlet Witch. Eventually, Scarlet Witch destroys her.
Some clues were also right out there for us. One of Agatha's defining qualities in the comic is a notable amulet she wears around her neck. In the WandaVision episodes, Agnes was almost always seen with a similar necklace.
Episode 3 continued to point us toward the idea that Agnes' identity might not be as simple as just 'the nosy neighbor.' We still have no idea what was going on with Vision's friendly neighbor, Herb, sawing through a wall behind his shrubbery. But Agnes, even then, was clearly plotting against Monica Rambeau, an agent of SWORD, and someone who clearly could stop whatever her evil plan was.
Agatha/Agnes asked Vision about "Geraldine"'s family, or lack thereof, and gets him thinking about his reality; something Wanda previously wouldn't let him do, rewinding him whenever he begins to go down that path.
After Episode 4, "We Interrupt This Program," pulled the curtain back to show us that the sitcom world we've been seeing is indeed a manipulated reality, Episode 5 partially returned us into the domed world, now being called "The Hex." (Thanks for that one, Darcy.)
Episode 5 had a few more fishy Agnes moments to add to the bunch. First, in one of the episode's earlier scenes, she sort of stops what she's doing and asks Wanda if she should "take it from the top." When Wanda and Vision both look at her, confused, she sort of goes on—but Vision's suspicion of his reality once again rises. Wanda looked perplexed.
Later, Agnes entered the Maximoff/Vision household holding a dog house at the exact moment the twins try to move forward with their plans to adapt a dog. Vision noticed that the right person comes at the right time almost always. This was when he began to figure that something was going on.
Agnes has one more scene near the end of the episode, where she finds the twins' dog in her bushes, and claims she tried to get him to stop eating plants, but it was too late. The twins pressure their mother to bring the dog back to life—knowing for some reason that she can do that—but she declines. Agnes, then, asks Wanda if this is something she can do. Wanda earlier in the episode used her magic right in front of Agnes, much to the disapproval of Vision.
As we learn in Agatha's Episode 7 reveal... she did this. She killed Sparky the dog. Monster!
While the episode seemed to want us to believe that Agnes is just another of the Westview residents being manipulated by Wanda's powers, it was, indeed, an instance of MCU misdirection. Agnes was always present when something weird is going on, and her breaking in the early part of the episode could be a strategic move; raise Vision's suspicion, get him and Wanda fighting (as they do at the end of the episode), and continue flying under the radar.
The show wanted us to think Wanda is doing all of this—but the hints were pouring in that she may not be alone. Wanda was controlling a lot, but not everything; Agnes had her hand in quite a bit.
Episode 6 wanted us, again, to think Agnes is among those being victimized, and under a trance. When Vision does a little bit of detective work, he finds her at the outskirts of town, under a trance. When he snapped her out—like he did the previous week with his coworker, Norm—she asks if she's dead, because she knows Vision is dead. We're led to believe that Agnes is another victim in this situation, but everything seems to happen around her. She's the one pushing Vision to find many of these conclusions. She's the one pushing him to walk out of The Hex and look for answers. It seemed like this would be the case, and Episode 7 confirmed it: when Vision looked away, Agatha hammed it up in front of her mirror like the villain she is.
Let's also take a look at everyone's Halloween costumes, revealing their true selves. Wanda is wearing a costume that resembles the classic Scarlet Witch comic costume. Vision is wearing a costume that looks just like his comic costume. The same with Pietro/Quicksilver, and the same for twins Tommy and Billy. So when Agnes is dressed in a traditional witch costume, well, we're just going to take her word for it.
It's also worth noting that Marvel hasn't always played it totally loyal to the comics; Iron Man 3 had a divisive twist surrounding its "Mandarin" villain, so for Agatha Harkness to suddenly become a slightly different version of herself as "Agnes" isn't entirely out of left field at all.
One more quick thing to note, and this one might be a bit out there: Agnes has repeatedly mentions her husband, Ralph, throughout WandaVision. There's a villain named Ralph in the Marvel lore: Ralph Roberts, who created an Iron Man-esque suit and also went by the name Cobalt Man. Cobalt Man has been an enemy of Tony Stark and Vision in comics and animated series in the past. Doesn't feel particularly likely, but just something worth noting.
In reality, the "Ralph" turned out to be "Ralph Bohner," the real name of the person we believed to be "Pietro Maximoff." inside the hex. However, "Ralph Bohner" may not just be a bro from New Jersey—he's Evan Peters, who played Quicksilver in the X-Men movies after all. There's always the chance that he's Jimmy Woo's witness protection program person from Episode 4, or that Agatha plucked him out of the multiverse herself.
Agatha's piece is still on the board. While Wanda defeated her, she's still alive—a shrewd move for a good villain. It remains to be seen if—or how—she will show up again in the MCU.
You Might Also Like
